Virtual Logical Partition Automated Robot

vLPAR®

The vLPAR®
appliance fully automates the deployment and configuration of entire
multi-system, multi-data center computing environments including
business continuity, disaster recovery, high availability, and
virtualization.

TriParadigm delivers automated
solutions for deploying business continuity (BC), disaster recovery
(DR), high availability (HA), and virtualization (VIO) as a
consumer commodity. This packaged solution called
vLPAR® is sold by
TriParadigm as an appliance that can plug
directly into your datacenter and reduce your administration costs by
75%. vLPAR® can also increase your profits by fully
implementing IBM Power 5 architectures and over-subscribing available
hardware resources to multiple customers, thus maximizing your
return-on-investment (ROI).

The business continuity methodology developed by
TriParadigm and implemented by
vLPAR® is characterized by a "build once, run
anywhere" mentality. This phrase is meant to illustrate the concept
of "containerized" business functions, where all resources related to
supporting a business function are grouped together in such a way as to
be able to run on any compatible system, in any datacenter, anywhere in
the world.

Each component and piece of a containerized business function is
constructed using enterprise wide unique identifiers so that naming and
numbering conflicts are eliminated, thus enabling the "build once,
run anywhere" mentality. In fact, this concept enables multiple
containers to run simultaneously on the same system, which is a common
practice when implementing a disaster recovery plan. In disaster
recovery operations, production systems are typically consolidated onto
a single system in the disaster recovery environment.

With vLPAR®, a datacenter operator has the ability to
offer it's customers, on-demand disaster recovery / high availability
clusters, or standalone systems, in real-time, all generated by the
customer from a simple web based interface.

For a customer to create their own BC/DR/HA/VIO solutions, they only
need to complete one simple web form. Their request is automatically
processed and system(s) are created in a matter of minutes, they are
notified upon completion and provided with a login name and password to
a fully functional cluster of systems. (DR/HA).

VLPAR provides the automated deployment of multiple systems, depending upon
the service level agreement(SLA) selected by the user when building a business solution.
Those SLA's are described and depicted below.

Service Level Agreement: Tier 1

The following diagram depicts the Disaster Recovery and High
Availability scenario for a Tier 1 service agreement level, as
implemented by
VLPAR®
automated deployment. Under this scenario, four(4) nodes are created
across two datacenters, two nodes in each datacenter.

In this scenario, both datacenters are considered to be running
production business functions. These functions normally run on a single
node in one of the datacenters, with a hot-standby node providing high
availability fail-over capabilities. Periodically, for maintenance and
disaster recovery testing, the business function load is shifted from
one datacenter to the other. Once the business functions are running in
the other datacenter, it is not failed-back until the next scheduled
maintenance or an unscheduled outage to the datacenter occurs.

Service Level Agreement: Tier 2

The following diagram depicts the Disaster Recovery and High
Availability scenario for a Tier 2 service agreement level, as
implemented by
VLPAR®
automated deployment. Under this scenario, three(3) nodes are created
across two datacenters, two nodes in the primary production datacenter,
one node in the disaster recovery datacenter.

In this scenario, the business functions are normally is normally
running on a single node in the production datacenter. In the event of
a hardware failure, the business functions are failed-over to a
hot-standby node in the production datacenter. In the event of a
datacenter failure, the business functions are failed-over to a hot-standby
node in the disaster recovery datacenter.

Service Level Agreement: Tier 3

The following diagram depicts the Disaster Recovery scenario for a
Tier 3 service agreement level, as implemented by
VLPAR®
automated deployment. Under this scenario, two(2) nodes are created
across two datacenters, one node in each datacenter.

In this scenario, the business functions are running on running on a
single node in the production datacenter. No high availability failover
is provided, so in the event of a hardware failure on the production
node, management must declare a disaster in order for a disaster
recovery failover to be initiated. When a disaster is declared, the
business functions are restarted on the disaster recovery node.

Service Level Agreement: Tier 4

The following diagram depicts the Disaster Recovery and High
Availability scenario for a Tier 4 service agreement level(SLA), as
implemented by
VLPAR®
automated deployment. Under this scenario, two(2) nodes are created in
an HACMP cluster within a single datacenter.

In this scenario, a two(2) node one-way cascading HACMP cluster is
running in the production datacenter. The business functions normally
run on a single node in the cluster, with a hot-standby node providing
high availability fail-over capabilities. In the event of a hardware
failure, the business functions are failed-over to the hot-standby node.
In the event of a disaster, no pre-built provisions exist.

Service Level Agreement: Tier 5

The following diagram depicts the Disaster Recovery and High
Availability scenario for a Tier 5 service agreement level(SLA), as
implemented by
VLPAR®
automated deployment. Under this scenario, one(1) node is created as a
standalone systems within a single datacenter.

In this scenario, a single standalone system exists running the
business functions, no high availability fail-over or disaster
recovery fail-over provisions exist. If a hardware failure occurs, the
business functions provided by the node will be unavailable until the
failure is corrected.